


can you show me hope

by MissSunFlower94



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loving Sasha Hours, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 19:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30043827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSunFlower94/pseuds/MissSunFlower94
Summary: On a piece of glorified driftwood in the middle of a powerful storm, Sasha considers a new profession.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	can you show me hope

**Author's Note:**

> My work for the RQG charity zine. Any chance I get to cry about Zolf and Sasha's friendship I will take! 
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this piece and appreciated everyone's feedback so far! Enjoy!

“Have you considered a, uh, profession as a sailor?” Zolf calls over the driving rain and the roaring wind. “Just keep yourself on a boat and you’re great!”

Sasha considers this with more attention than she necessarily has to spare. Thankfully, she’s found the rhythm of rowing and no longer needs to listen to Hamid’s calls. She certainly has not considered a profession as a sailor, but then, she hadn’t considered a job as an antique’s appraiser before she had met Mr Gusset either. 

“I- I mean, is there stuff to climb up on? Can you sneak around much on boats?”

“Big ones, yeah.”

“Oh, alright.”

Sasha continues to consider this. She’d only caught glimpses of the ships in Dover, and always at a distance that made it hard for her to judge their true size. From that distance, though, some of them had looked proper massive, the size of an entire block in Other London. She had no idea what someone would use to fill that space. If Zolf thought there were places she could sneak around on, there had to be stuff on those ships. Unless Zolf thought she could sneak around  _ without _ much cover. He’d be right, but that also doesn’t mean she’s comfortable. 

“What does someone do?” she adds, to fill the silence — if it can be called that. “As a sailor, I mean.”

“Sail,” Zolf deadpans.

Sasha glares, but is too curious to drop it. “How many people does it take to sail, then? Do you all got different jobs or does everyone got to know everything?”

Zolf opens his mouth when a particularly large gust of wind interrupts their conversation. Hamid falters, but their rowing does not and they manage to keep the little boat upright and on course. Zolf keeps his eye on the halfling until he has his footing again.

“What were you asking?” he calls over to Sasha again.

She debates telling him it doesn't matter. It doesn’t, after all. They’ve got people to chase down in Paris and elsewhere from there; ships or boats or what-have-you don’t really factor into any current plans. The idea that she’s got a plan at all, even one that has been assigned to her, is a novel experience. Knowing that she’ll be alive, free from Barrett’s grasp long enough that she can start to make plans of her own? That’s still too unheard of for her to properly contemplate it. 

Still, as she continues the rhythm of rowing in time with Zolf, she finds herself saying something else. “Could you teach me?” 

“What?” Zolf says.

“To sail!” Sasha calls back. 

There’s a beat. “A little busy right now!”

Sasha rolls her eyes. Zolf is a good boss — another novel concept — and certainly knows a lot that she doesn’t, but sometimes he can be dense about the strangest things. “Well, yea- no, not- I meant later!” 

He looks as baffled by the concept of _ later _ as Sasha feels, even if she brought it up. It’s a little comforting that it’s not just her background that makes it hard to conceptualize a future after this weird, ongoing mission. “Right,” he says at last, looking briefly lost in thought, though he never pauses in their synchronized rowing. 

When he doesn’t pick back up, Sasha adds, “Could you teach me to sail one of the big ones? With all the space to climb?”

Zolf shakes himself. “N- well, I mean, I _could_ , but you couldn’t sail that with just us — even if I taught Hamid, too.” 

Hamid waves a hand, pausing his somewhat superfluous calling. “I’m- I’m alright.”

Zolf snorts, more fond than dismissive. Sasha frowns. “How many people would it need?”

“Eh, for the bigger merchant vessels you’re thinking ‘bout, anywhere from fifteen to thirty.”    
  
Sasha opens her mouth. Closes it. “What for?”

He laughs. It’s a rare sound, nice if a little harsh. “A lot of things. I can teach you every role, to some degree, but you’d still not be able to perform all of them by yourself. You need people working together for things to run smoothly.”

“Right,” she says stiffly. She bites her tongue from asking more questions: how could she trust that 15 other people could have her back — and trust her to have theirs? She was vaguely aware of the concept of a captain, someone who rules over the ship. It’s a different kind of ruling to Barrett and Other London, she thinks. Captains probably did more than sit in safety and accrue loyalty through blackmail and threats. If nothing else, if they needed however many people to sail, captains probably didn’t murder those who disappointed them. 

Sasha doesn’t know much about loyalty that wasn’t bought through fear. She isn’t sure she trusts it. 

“Sasha?” Zolf’s voice raises to a shout over the roaring wind. She blinks, and realizes he had continued to speak. 

“Right — sorry, what?” she stumbles. 

“I was saying, if that ain’t your speed, we can start smaller.”

“Smaller?” she repeats. “Like this?”

“Ships aren’t just naval vessels and rotten dinghies,” he says dryly. “If we weren’t in a bloody hurricane, there’d be all sizes of fishing boats out on the channel. Sometime, later, I suppose, we could… you know, look at chartering one.” His voice takes on an odd, contemplative tone Sasha doesn’t know how to interpret.

She frowns instead. “And how many- how many people would those take to sail?”

“You’re, uh, you’re really caught up on that,” he observes. 

“Well, I- yeah- I just don’t think- I don’t know... it’s a lot of people, yeah?” 

“I’d think you’d like that — or at least that you’d be used to it.”

She wishes she didn’t need to be rowing so that she could do something else with her hands. Fiddle with them somehow. “Yeah, but that’s not- I’m used to _ crowds  _ and crowds are more like- kinda not like  _ people _ at all they’re like... the sea,” she says a bit wildly. “Like a big mass of something you navigate through and work… around, not- not  _ with _ . Don’t know how to work with- with anyone really, not properly anyway.”

Zolf is silent. She waits for him to say that she’s working with them right now, but he doesn’t and she’s grateful; she doesn’t know how to justify that, either. It’s still so new she’s not sure that her anxieties have fully caught up with that reality yet, and the longer they’re at bay, the better.

He’s silent for so long that Sasha begins to wonder whether he’s thinking of something else again, maybe just about keeping this little driftwood dingy sailing. She doesn’t know anything about sailing yet, but she’s beginning to recognize that he’s very good at it. This is his element, the way Other London is hers — no matter how dangerous both are.

“Think I could find one that could manage with four people,” Zolf says at last.

Sasha blinks, a wave of emotions hitting her as strong as the one that knocked her overboard. “Right,” she says, to say something, to settle her swell of something that feels like anxiety but different, nicer. “May- maybe three. Don’t think Bertie’d be a good hand at this sort of thing.”

Zolf laughs again. “Yeah,” he says, his smile warmer than Sasha’s felt all day. “Yeah.”

They slip back into silence as, for the first time, Sasha lets herself consider the future. 


End file.
